Ethnic identity and the Indians in Brazil

The contact among natives and white peoples in America started a process of disassembly of the american native population identity. This process kept as its central idea for almost 500 years, the objective of making the native inhabitant a person integrated to the dominant society, active economicaley and socially "adapted". This integration/assimilation process never happened. Although the brazilian Empire and Republic, as well as the portuguese colonial state before them, had made a lot of efforts to erase the identity of these native groups, we can detect, the of XX century, the tribal identity re-born which, beyond being recognized, become able to garanted the etnic rights attributed.